Category: Hardware

Posted on by — Leave a comment

Gamecube Gameboy Player

Rather than a new console, this update is for a new accessory. The Gameboy player, as it suggests, allows you to play Gameboy/Color/Advance games on the Gamecube.

I picked this up from eBay for a reasonable price as it was the unit only without the required disc. But since my Gamecube is modded I can run the GBI software instead which is a community version of the player software and is apparently better in every way anyway.

The unit sits underneath the Gamecube and utilises the ports on the bottom of the Gamecube. A very nice subtle upgrade.

Now when the batteries run out on my Gameboy Advance, I have the option of switching to the big screen and continuing my game from where I left off. The picture quality is also pretty good coming through the OSSC and into the plasma TV in the bedroom.

Posted on by — Leave a comment

3D Acceleration from 2002

My old Shuttle xPC Windows XP PC has needed a little more grunt for a while. The motherboard has an 8x AGP slot so my choice of cards was slightly limited. After a bit of research I found the best AGP 8x card available and then discovered they fetch £150+ on eBay. So i started reducing my specification until I found some cards for a reasonable price. However, even at that point I came across an issue which I haven’t had for a long time, the Shuttle xPC only has a 230w power supply and this was no where near enough for the higher end AGP cards of the time.

I eventually settled for this little beauty. The GeForce 4 MX440. With a staggering 64mb of RAM and both VGA and DVI ports it’s an amazing piece of hardware for £15. Well maybe not amazing but it runs the orignal GTA at a frame rate that is far too fast to be playable so I have to turn the frame limiter on.

This PC is never really going to be used as a gaming machine, but it’s nice that it can run the old classics of which some don’t work very nicely, or at all in Windows 10 on modern hardware. Time to run up some of those old talkie editions of point and click adventures like Simon the Sorcerer and Day of the Tentacle.

Posted on by — Leave a comment

Running in Parallel!!

So since having the Iomega Zip drive I’ve had one missing component. A PC with a parallel port! Nothing modern comes with them anymore and it appears that PCI-E parallel cards just don’t like the Zip Drive. I have tried running VM’s etc but no matter what I did I couldn’t get it working.

I did have one hope, and that is an old Shuttle XPC computer I have running an AMD Sempron processor. This PC is my Retro PC which I keep around since it has a floppy drive too. Unfortunatly although the motherboard does have a parallel port, it was an optional extra connector which can no longer be purchased. Looking inside it looks like an IDC connector but has a smaller pin pitch. After much browsing on eBay I found a Lenovo PC which seemed to use the same connecter so I gave it a shot.

And the result is!!!

IT WORKS 🙂

Now I can get on and stick all my Atari Portfolio software onto a zip disk rather than having to send it across serial cables!

Posted on by — Leave a comment

Jaguar Skunkboard Guide

I have just added the first page under the modifications section of the site. I hope to fill this section with guides about how to do some of the hardware modifications I have done to the consoles and computers in my collection.

My first guide is the menu system I created using a Raspberry Pi to program the Jaguar Skunkboard flash ROM cartridge.

This can be found here:

http://localhost/wordpress/jaguar-skunkboard-programmer/

Posted on by — Leave a comment

My Atari Portfolio goes online :)

After many months of waiting and monitoring eBay. I finally managed to acquire a serial interface for my Atari Portfolio 🙂

So now along with plugging it into cash machines to take out as much money as I want, and breaking into the secure areas of Cyberdyne Systems, I can also connect up to my WiFi network and browse the BBS’s

Incidently my WiFi network is named “SKYNET” so it’s pretty cool when I connect the Portfolio up to the ESP 8266 based MoDem to see the phrase “Connected to SKYNET” showing on the screen. It’s the simple things that make me smile.

Posted on by — Leave a comment

YouTube: C64 Component Video Mod

I have recently purchased and fitted a component video mod for the C64 from videogameperfection.com

I bought this as I got a second OSSC for the bedroom and then discovered that the C64 cannot do any sort of RGB output so it didn’t work.

After fitting this the image quality is now amazing. Never seen it so sharp.

This is the first of what I hope to be a series about modfying retro computers and consoles to get the most of them in modern times 🙂

Posted on by — Leave a comment

Taking the C64 online in 2020

So I have a few ESP8266 boards kicking around and wondered if there was any cool C64 projects available. Well yes there is! With a bit of soldering and a C64 userport, you can turn one into a WiFi capable Modem for the C64.

I built this up a few nights ago and have since been connecting to some of the many BBS systems still running and usuable from the C64 terminal program CCGMS.

With its colour character based graphics the experience was actually pretty satisfying and there is something really cool about going back in time and seeing the “internet” back as it was in the good old days 🙂